“Why does it sound like you’re in a pool?” Delaney asked.
Beth repositioned herself, and the water sloshed again. “Sorry. I’m in the bathtub, and I knew if I didn’t answer, you’d be worried.”
Silence rang out for a beat. Then… “At…the guesthouse?” She didn’t miss the insinuation in her sister’s tone.
Because she was a terrible liar, when Beth didn’t offer a prompt enough reply, her sister gasped.
“You’re in Eli’s bathtub? Are you alone? Oh god, tell me you’re alone and that I didn’t just interrupt my baby sister having bathtub sex!”
“Shhhh!” Beth cried, though she was ninety-nine percent sure Eli still wasn’t home. Just in case, though, she didn’t want her…her what? She waved off her own thought, remembering that she and Eli never put a label on this other than whatever, and this wasn’t the time to start thinking about what whatever meant.
“Oh my god!” Delaney whisper-shouted. “You’re not alone!”
“I am,” Beth insisted at regular volume this time. “Eli got a phone call about work and had to run out for a bit. But he drew me a bath first. With bubbles.”
“Put me on video so you can see my jaw on the floor. Eli Murphy just has bubble bath lying around the house? A house that you’re in and I’ve never been in, by the way.”
Beth laughed, made sure she was covered in bubbles up to her neck, and switched the call from audio to video. As promised, Delaney’s camera turned on to reveal a slack-jawed stare…and something orange caked on her cheek.
“Do you have food on your face?” Beth asked.
Her sister sighed. “You’re living it up in a bubble bath while I’m over here with a toddler who thinks feeding Mommy a bit of her lunch means smearing it all over Mommy’s face.” She rubbed the dried mush on her cheek. “Guess I missed a spot.”
Beth raised her brows. “Living it up? Did you delete last night from your brain? I’m nursing the world’s worst hangover and a swollen ankle only one day after getting my cast off. Not that it’s a pain Olympics. I know you work hard, mama bear. I just feel like I took two steps back when I should be moving forward.”
She wiggled her toes beneath the water, wincing when pain pinched the back of her ankle and shot up her calf.
“You overdid it on the dance floor, didn’t you?”
Beth nodded. “And riding earlier that day. But, Lanes…” A smile spread across her lips. “Riding Midnight with both feet in the stirrups, like riding her for real? I don’t know how to describe it. The only thing I can remember that might compare is…I don’t know…maybe putting on my first pair of tap shoes and dancing around the tile entry of the motel lobby while Mom and Dad played the Radio City Christmas Spectacular on the TV.”
Delaney laughed. “Weren’t you, like, four? I don’t remember anything about being four, let alone how something at that age made me feel.”
Beth shrugged. “Do you remember when you fell in love with animals? Or Sam? Or what it felt like to see Nolan after she was born?”
Delaney sighed. “Okay, okay. I get it. Important moments stick.”
“Exactly,” Beth replied. “And it was an important day for Midnight too, you know? Her previous owners were ready to euthanize her, and there she was, galloping off the property and through the woods like a pro! I’m so proud of her!”
A big smile spread across Delaney’s face, and the hairs on the back of Beth’s neck stood on end.
“What?” Beth asked.
“What do you mean, what?” her sister countered.
A small pile of bubbles loosed itself from her protective armor and tickled the bottom of her chin. She swatted it away with her free hand, careful not to splash water onto her phone.
“I mean you look like you’re scheming, and I already know your schemes tend to uproot my life without my full consent.”
Delaney pressed a hand to her chest, her mouth agape in feigned indignation.
“It’s how I ended up here in the first place. It’s how I ended up at the doctor’s office yesterday. And I’m not sure how yet to pin this one on you, but just to make it a solid three, I’m sure you had something to do with me tossing my cookies into a public trash can last night.”
Only now Delaney’s indignation didn’t look so feigned.
“Do you really see being here while you heal as a punishment?” Her sister’s smile was gone.
Beth thought. She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when she stopped looking at Meadow Valley as a place where she was stuck but instead as simply the place she was. For now.
“Come on, Lanes,” she teased. “You know I wasn’t being serious. But this isn’t my life. It’s the place where I’m coddled and taken care of, whether I want to be or not.” She paused and waited for her sister’s smile to reappear, but it didn’t. “You found your dream here, and I’m so happy you did. You have your shelter, an amazing husband, and the cutest little girl on the entire planet. All facts, by the way.”
The corner of Delaney’s mouth twitched. “She really is the cutest, right?”
Beth nodded. “But I haven’t found my dream yet.”
Despite her choice in profession—which certainly wasn’t easy—she tended to take the easiest route. All she’d ever wanted was to dance onstage at Radio City Music Hall, but when she got her first job as a Vegas showgirl and started making money…as a dancer…it was so easy to stay put. Despite the heavy costumes and grueling hours, Beth loved what she did. Then she was suddenly twenty-nine, a full decade older than some of the youngest Rockettes. If she didn’t try now, then when? And what if she’d waited too long? What if she left something good for something she thought was great, but it wasn’t?
“What are you thinking?” Delaney asked, finally breaking the silence. “Your brows are all pinched.”
Beth let out a long breath, not sure what she would say until the words were out of her mouth. “What if I somehow, subconsciously, sabotaged myself? Like, what if when I was running up those stairs to the stage, somewhere in the back of my head a little voice was whispering, ‘If you never make it to that stage, you’ll never have to know whether you’re good enough or not…whether this is what will finally make you happy in that way where you can’t imagine your life any other way. If you never make it to that stage, you’ll never have to decide.’”
Beth shivered. The water in the tub was turning cold.
“Oh, Bethy,” Delaney said. “It’s okay to be scared of the unknown.”
Beth’s vision grew cloudy, and she swiped at a tear. “Shit!” she swore, because the finger she used to wipe away the tear was covered in bubbles, and now the bubbles were in her eye.
“Are you okay?” Delaney asked, and Beth stared at her with one stinging eye squeezed shut.
“I think we need to cut this heart-to-heart short,” she told her big sister, because it looked like whenever Beth was on the verge of some sort of monumental moment in her life, the universe tore her Achilles, had her upchuck into a trash can, or put bubble bath in her eye. Or maybe there was no universe messing with her at all, and it was just Beth sabotaging the big moments so she wouldn’t have to fear the outcome.
“Okay,” Delaney relented. “But I’m here when you’re ready to talk again. And Eli, Bethy. Eli’s there for you too, if you’ll let him.”
More tears leaked from her closed eye, but these were from ridiculous pain and not anything to do with Eli Murphy being another example of the easy path she couldn’t keep taking, not when there was a universe—or self-sabotage—to finally prove wrong.
She ended the call, reached for the knob that turned on the cold water, and stuck her face directly beneath it.
A short while later, despite Eli’s protestations before he’d left, Beth dressed in her clothes from the night before and limped back to the guesthouse. She changed into jeans and the Betty Boop showgirl T-shirt her sister gave her before her very first show, and just to be safe she strapped on her air cast before heading out to the barn. She wasn’t going to do anything foolish. She just needed to be with someone who wouldn’t ask her questions when she was clearly still searching for the answers.
She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, using them as a headband to keep her damp hair out of her face, and she strode through the barn door.
“Hey there, Cirrus,” she cooed as the white stallion poked his nose over his stall door. She gave him a soft pat, and he nuzzled into her palm. “Guess you like me more than Ace did, huh?”
He whinnied, and she wondered if she had been the one to give off bad vibes to Ace in the first place. Despite her excitement to ride, at that point in time she hadn’t wanted to ride any horse but Midnight, and some part of her had let Ace know.
Speaking of Midnight…
Beth found her friend lying in her bedding, catching a midday snooze.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
Using the app Eli downloaded to her phone, she disabled the alarm and opened the stall door.
Midnight blinked one eye open and perked up when she saw her rider. She offered Beth an affectionate snort but didn’t bother standing up.
“Don’t get up on my account,” Beth teased, waving off the mare’s nonexistent gesture.
Midnight shook her head and snorted again before resting her head back on the stall’s bedding.
“You feeling okay, girl?” Beth asked, making sure her section of floor was clean enough before lowering herself to the ground. “Maybe we both overdid it yesterday.”
She nestled against the mare’s side so that the two of them made a T, Beth’s feet extending into the opened doorway of the stall. They were a carbon copy of the first day they met, yet so much had already changed in four short weeks.
“Is it weird if I ask for your advice?” Beth began. “I know you can’t answer me,” she added. “Not with words at least. But maybe what I need is someone to listen while I figure it out on my own, you know?”
Midnight sighed, and she probably would have sighed whether Beth was there or not. It didn’t stop Beth from insisting to herself that if anyone understood her, Midnight did.
So she told her about the Rockettes and her first pair of tap shoes, about never missing the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, about her fear of failing at her dream.
“Okay,” she told the mare when she finally finished spewing her entire history. “What do you think? Am I up for this one final try, or should I take what the doctor says at face value and throw in the towel before I injure myself worse? I’m just warning you, though, that if you go with option B, I don’t actually have a plan B, so I’m kinda lost.”
Her throat tightened, and she felt the horse shift beneath her. A second later, Midnight’s chin rested on her shoulder. Beth couldn’t help but laugh.
“Fine,” she relented as Midnight nuzzled even closer to Beth’s cheek. “I found you. But you can’t be my dream.” She wrapped her arm around the mare’s face and gave her a pet between the eyes, right on her white star. “Will friends do for now?”
Midnight puffed a burst of air from her nostrils, making Beth’s cheek slightly damp.
“Ew, girl!” she cried out as she laughed at the result of asking a horse for advice. “You ever heard the phrase ‘say it, don’t spray it’?”
Her equine friend whinnied, and Beth supposed the closest she might ever get to the mare speaking back to her was a cheek peppered with horse snot.
Beth wiped away the barely there mess with the hem of her T-shirt, then soon found her eyelids growing heavy. She tilted her head forward, allowing her sunglasses to fall over her eyes, then let out a long sigh before settling in for a Sunday afternoon catnap.
“No matter where I end up, I can always come back here and see you. And do stuff like this, right?”
And Eli… Would he be here for her too once she figured out the mess that was her life? Did she want him to be?
Out of all her questions, that was the only one she could answer.
Yes. Whatever my future is, I want Eli Murphy to somehow be in it.
Because the possibility of a future without dance, without Midnight, and without him? That was something Beth couldn’t fathom, even if she had no idea how it could work.
As she drifted off, she heard a voice mention something about rehabbing Midnight and placing her in a good home. Was it Eli? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that Midnight had already found a good home, which meant placing her should be a nonissue by now.
Yes. Perfect. If and when she ever returned to Meadow Valley, she’d find it exactly as she’d left it—and the people she loved exactly where she’d left them.
And then she was out, the only sound a hushed whisper in the distance, a sound she was sure existed only in a dream.